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The Rise of Cities and Hydraulic Civilizations(8000-3000 BCE)
To a nomad, a city must have been like walking into one of our science fiction movies but greater because we have cities to base it on. Then, the nomads had little or nothing to base a city on. The earliest cities arose around c.8000 BCE a little after the founding of agriculture. The oldest known city was Jericho, dating back to c.8000 BCE, making it more than twice as old than the great pyramids. Jericho was a desert city located near a fresh water spring and largely oweing its existence to that spring because trade caravans would trade them crops and meat for their water. Jericho had an estimated several thousand people which were well organized enough to build a city wall, moat, citadel, and reservoir. Another city was Catal Huyuk in modern day Turkey, dates from around c.6500 BCE, and was a religious center, relying on hunting, farming, and trade. Isolated cities such as Jericho and Catal Huyuk did not create civilizations. To do that it would rquire several cities covering an area and sharing a common culture: language, religion, technology, art, and architecture. The very first civilizations arose in hot river valleys such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northwest India, and China. The importance of rivers to these civilizations has given birth to the term, hydraulic civilizations, which comes from the greek word ''hydra, ''meaning water. Rivers like these are good for trade and travel which leads to spread of culture, ideas, and civilization. A common culture would begin to emerge, as each city adopted techniques used by sister cities. The rivers, and hot and dry climate spawned another activity critical to early civilizations: Irrigation Let us look at Mesopotamia, with the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are the only source for water. These rivers flooded annually and so gave the farmers the idea to bring the water to their farms. At first, it involved nothing more than catching floodwaters and letting them gradually run back to the fields. As populations grew the farms got bigger, which ment bigger, more involved and complex irrigation systems. Such a project being so complex required someone to manage the project. Since rivers were a sign of religous power the only person who could manage someone tapping into the river to get water could be the local town priest. In return the priest would get grain and domesticated farm animals. Since the priest could not eat an entire bovine, the surplus food would be the first form of capital. The priest would then put it in his "business," building a larger templecalled Ziggurats)Built in pyramid form so more levels and rooms could be added to the temple and storehouse for the extra grain and meat. This required the priest to hire accountants, builders, and guards whom settled their families around the temple. This cycle would go on and once the town was large enough, craftsmen would move in and make pottery and tools for builders and workers. This expanded a once small hunting village, to a majestic city in which thousands among thousands of people lived. People started wanting materials that was not available to them such as wood, limestone, metal and other valuable resources. In result, some men became merchants, and sent off on expeditions for new resources, technological advances, ideas, and common cultures. The city would get more populous and wealthy. With more cities on the rivers each city on one river would be similar to another city somewhere else on that river. More cities also brought war for land and resources. The first wars emerged. Since priests were ill-suited for fighting, they would choose a Lugal("Great Man") to lead the wars. After a war a lugal would resign or stay in position, and be promoted to a permenant officer, King, which would lead the city-state into war, and administer justice in peacetime. This brought on tensions to the priests, whom felt their position in society were threatened. The temple (or, more technically, the gods) owned most of the land in the city-state. This made the temple unpopular with the people, whom looked to the king for protection. Eventually, the king would become the most powerful figure in the city-state, however, the temple remained very influential, controlling much land, patronizing the arts, and acting as a grain bank and redistribution center during times of famine. Another problem was that in higher populated cities(20000-30000 people) not everybody knew each other which led to distrust and usually, crimes. The influx of wealth also brought along more defined social classes since the currency was not divided equally. This, and all the jobs having to be done led to distrust and crime. Law codes had to be formed and courts of justice maintained, which also led to the need of a strong federal government ruled by the king. Out of all that dust appears the brightest of civilizations which will either fall to their doom, or rise as a royal hierarchy in the world and live in peace for thousands of years to come. Next article Previous article Back to History Outline Sources *http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/pre/1/FC6